J. Robert Wegs

Toward the Twenty-first Century

By the mid-1990s Europeans could point with pride to many postwar achievements: the reemergence of Europe as a powerful economic and cultural force, the growth of affluence, the rejection of authoritarian government in the south, greater independence in foreign affairs, and the end of European overseas colonialism. But most important was the end of the Cold War and the division of Europe. With the demise of Stalinism and Leninism and the end of Soviet rule, Eastern Europe and the successor states of the Soviet Union began to move toward more democratic forms of government and a closer association with Western Europe.

Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1970s, 1980s, and Beyond: The Quest for Legitimacy Fails

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have experienced four major phases since 1968, with Soviet directives or experiences the predominant influence in the first and third phases and indigenous East European developments decisive in the second stage. The first phase ensued immediately after the suppression of the 1968 Czech uprising, when the Soviet Union sought to shore up its Eastern European Empire through a carrot-and-stick approach. Adherence to the Warsaw Pact and Comecon were stressed, and any attempts to challenge the supremacy of the Communist parties or to develop political pluralism were rejected. To make such a policy palatable, the Soviet Union encouraged consumerism through subsidies and Western credits, in order to legitimize Communist regimes through an improved standard of living and to divert attention from the absence of political freedom. Although these policies succeeded in the early 1970s, the serious worldwide economic downturn after the midseventies, coupled with the failures of economic planning in the Communist bloc, brought huge debts and economic chaos to Eastern Europe.

Western European Political and Economic Trends Since the 1960s

European economic and social renewal in the sixties provided strong support for the political status quo. Conservatives in Western Europe and Socialists in Scandinavia continued their decades-long rule during this long period of economic resurgence. But the economic downturn that began in the early seventies, described below, helped unseat incumbent political parties throughout Europe as electorates voted for change. A leftward trend that had begun in Western Europe in the sixties, as a result of relaxed East-West tensions and a growing Socialist political moderation, accelerated rapidly in the seventies. The apparent moderation and national-centered policies of some Western European Communist parties, or “Eurocommunists” as they were called for a brief period in the seventies, gained them some additional support. Europeans no longer thought that a vote for a Communist candidate was necessarily a vote for Moscow. The continued relaxation of tensions between East and West and Europe’s desire to pursue an independent foreign policy had promoted a policy of detente, or increased understanding and contacts, between Western Europe and the Communist world. These contacts, especially the economic ones, were maintained or even enhanced despite the United States-Soviet animosity in the early eighties. Gorbachev’s assumption of power again relaxed East-West tensions and permitted a resumption of contacts. By the mid-1990s, many of the former Communist states of Eastern Europe and the European successor states to the Soviet Union, most prominently Russia, had even signed a halfway house arrangement with NATO, the Partnership for Peace.

Economics and Society in the Communist World, 1945–1990

During the immediate postwar decades, the East European countries and the Soviet Union made good on their promise to bring about a greater equalization of income. Their economic policies, however, lowered dramatically the standard of living for the vast mass of their populations, which contributed significantly to the collapse of these regimes in 1989–1990. They achieved greater social equalization after the war through the abandonment of private ownership of property, the nationalization of industry, and a greater equalization of educational opportunity. But in place of an elite based on private ownership, there emerged an elite based on special privilege. Moreover, economic difficulties forced these countries to reintroduce income differentiation in order to bring about the economic reforms necessary to stimulate economic performance. While the income disparities were not as great as they were in the West, the higher income and greater privileges of the elite brought about social disparities and popular resentment in the East. This chapter will examine economic and social developments within the Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1989.

A Bipolar World

Contemporary history tends to exaggerate the influence of major, dramatic events—the impact of World War II on Europe’s role in world affairs, for example. Long-term developments—the growing economic and political importance of the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union, or the demographic patterns that began to reduce Europe’s proportion of the world’s population after 1930—do not receive the attention given to a cataclysmic event such as World War II. Europe’s weakened condition after the war, especially the collapse of the German center, made U.S. and USSR military might appear even more formidable. As we will see throughout the text, much of the history of the postwar years involves a European recapturing of the worldwide influence it had in 1900 but lost in 1945.

From Left to Right: European Politics, 1945–1948

When the Second World War drew to a close in Europe in May of 1945, even the victors had little to celebrate. With approximately fourteen million deaths in Western and Central Europe, one-half of them civilians, and the transplanting of another sixteen million during and immediately after the war, few families escaped the war’s suffering. The specter of economic ruin and famine threatened much of the continent. In Great Britain, wartime debts and postwar shortages cut short the victory celebrations. In France, the destruction of large areas of the northeast as well as chaos in internal social and political affairs boded ill for the nation’s future. For the defeated, Germany and Italy, the future seemed even bleaker. In Germany the survivors would have to live with widespread destruction, famine, and an economy that had ground to a halt. Germany also had to absorb 11.7 million ethnic Germans who had fled or been driven out of Eastern Europe. Countries that had been caught between the major belligerents, such as Belgium and Holland, had also suffered severely from the war.

The Cold War and the Sovietization of Eastern Europe

The modern history of Eastern Europe is a history of encirclement by more powerful empires and nations. Before and during the eighteenth century, this area fell victim to the expansionist drives of the Russian, Prussian, Austrian, and Ottoman empires. Although Greece, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria gained independence in the nineteenth century, theirs was a perilous existence that resulted from the compromises and machinations of the major powers. Since no major power gained a decided military advantage until after World War II, conflicts in Eastern Europe tended to be limited.

1968: Year of Crisis

On its way toward the affluent society, Western Europe was shocked by a series of student-led riots in 1968 that ultimately brought into question much of what Europe’s leaders had been trying to achieve since 1945. Before the riots began, some political scientists had suggested that the relative absence of serious political turmoil could only be explained by an “end of ideology” brought about by the inappropriateness of radical solutions in the modern welfare state. Both in Europe and in the United States during the 1950s students seemed to have little interest in politics. Although American students became more active in the early 1960s in response to the civil rights movement and then to the Vietnam War, Europe’s students remained quiet. Even if students had been dissatisfied, no one expected that their activities could harm the stable advanced European societies, let alone nearly bring down the government in France. Unrest was not confined to Western Europe. In Czechoslovakia, students and reformminded Communist party members overthrew an ossified bureaucratic party leadership and blew a breath of fresh air into the party before they themselves fell to Soviet forces in late 1968. Despite the obvious political differences between France and Czechoslovakia, both were perceived by the demonstrators as-authoritarian, bureaucratic states that were unresponsive to the needs of the citizenry.

Economic Recovery in Western Europe

In the two decades following 1948, revolutionary economic changes laid the groundwork for what many observers termed the New Europe. By 1960, Europe had regained its place as the leading trading area in the world, with nearly one-quarter of the world’s industrial output and 40 percent of the world’s trade. In 1994, it continued to hold this position with nearly a fourth of the world’s economic output and 37 percent of world trade.

The End of European Empire

During the two decades following World War II, Europe lost its Asian and its African empires. The Asian empire was the first to go because of national liberation movements that began before World War I. By 1965, most of Africa had followed the Asian countries to independence. Over forty countries, with one-quarter of the world’s population, had overthrown colonialism in this brief span of time.